EDITORIAL: Lessons From Deepwater Horizon Disaster Still Resonate

(TNS) - Next month marks the ninth anniversary of the British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion off the coast of Louisiana that killed 11, injured 17 others, and spewed millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

For those of us closest to the accident, the April 20, 2010, explosion will always be, first and foremost, a grave tragedy. But for analysts who study such things, the mishap is also something else: a case study yielding insights about how similar mistakes might be prevented in the future.

Or so we’ve been reminded by “Meltdown,” a 2018 book by Chris Clearfield and András Tilcsik that’s just been published in paperback. The subtitle of “Meltdown” is “What Plane Crashes, Oil Spills, and Dumb Business Decisions Can Teach Us About How to Succeed at Work and at Home.”

Clearfield is a former derivatives trader who lives in Seattle. Tilcsik, who researches organizational behavior, lives in Toronto. “Meltdown” is about a number of systems failures, including Deepwater Horizon, a crash on the Washington, D.C. metro, and an accidental overdose in a state-of-the-art hospital.

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